Tag: Something For Thursday

It’s always struck me as a shame that as the trumpet became a fully chromatic instrument in the 1800s, with the invention of valves, it still languished in the back of the orchestra, getting few opportunities for feature solo work. Here’s one such piece, actually written for the cornet and a virtuoso of that instrument, Jules Levi. Jacques Offenbach wrote this, and it’s a pleasantly fun and lovely piece. A deep work it’s not. Depth in concerted music for the trumpet would have to wait until the 20th century, unfortunately.

Here is the American Eagle Waltz by Jacques Offenbach.

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The birthday of the great Jerry Goldsmith was the other day, on the 10th. And honestly, Goldsmith deserves a more poetic tribute than I’ve got in me right now, because it’s late in the work week and I’m tired and as I write this I have already consumed half of a beverage, if you take my meaning. So I’ll just let a selection of his music speak for itself. Luckily, Jerry Goldsmith was one of the greats of 20th century music (not just film music, but music in general!), and this is probably my favorite score of his. Here is a suite from The Wind and the Lion.

By the way, The Wind and the Lion is a good entry in the “What movie has the best closing line?” sweepstakes: “Is there not one thing in your life that is worth losing everything for?”

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Paul Le Mat in American Graffiti:

Buddy Holly died February 3, 1959, 66 years ago. That’s an entire lifetime, almost…possibly several lifetimes. Had he lived to this day, he would be 88 years old, certainly not outside the realm of possibility.

And he didn’t die alone. Richie Valens, born just three months before my mother, would be 83 now. The Big Bopper was the “old man” of the group who got on that plane; he’d be 94 now had he lived.

I went to college just an hour or so’s drive from Clear Lake, IA, where those three men boarded a small plane to make the journey to their next tour stop, and where the plane crashed in a field just a short distance away. The lore surrounding the crash–Valens “winning” his seat on the plane in a coil-flip, bandmate Waylon Jennings wisecracking to Holly about the plane crashing (a comment that would haunt him the rest of his life)–has taken on a life of its own over the years, especially the sense of what rock music history might have been had those three artists continued.

Certainly popular culture has never forgotten that moment. The sense of a world shifting informs all of George Lucas’s amazing American Graffiti, a world shifting when it had never settled in the first place. A biopic of Valens, La Bamba, came along in the 80s, introducing the world to Lou Diamond Philips and giving the band Los Lobos its biggest hit, a cover of the Valens title tune. (I remember the film’s rather heavy-handed plane-crash imagery throughout, which led Roger Ebert to note that the film’s version of Valens would have been surprised to not die in a plane crash.)

I never made it out to the crash location, which is like many such places a pilgrimage spot. I know that since it’s in the middle of a field you can’t just drive up to it; you have to park and then walk in. It’s a corn field, though, so it’s all straight lines. Just east of the crash site, Interstate 35 lies. I don’t know if you can see the site from that road, but I’ve driven by it quite a few times. It’s quite a thing, isn’t it–one of the most somber moments in the history of popular music is now the kind of place where a roadside historical marker stands.

The biggest cultural artifact of that awful day in Clear Lake, IA, is probably the eight-minute long masterpiece of impressionistic lyric energy that Don McLean penned about it. I don’t know if McLean coined the phrase “the day the music died” to refer to the February 3 crash, but that phrase has certainly come to mean that horrible event. The song unfurls in a wave of impressionistic verse that has had people scrambling to figure out the inner meanings ever since the thing came out in October 1971 (making it probably the first significant work of art of my lifetime!). McLean has resisted confirming any specific meanings for the various persons or events referenced in the song, though he has admitted some of the symbolic meanings contained within. The song is lyrically dense and eternally fascinating. It’s been present pretty much my entire life, and I honestly don’t remember a time when I wasn’t at least passingly familiar with this tune about the guys in the Chevy down by the levee, drinking whiskey and rye. It wasn’t until the 90s that I really started to dig into the song and learn its words. I’ve always resisted all the “meanings”, including the insistence in the late 90s and early 00s, bolstered by an email chain letter (remember those?) that the plane was actually named “American Pie”. It was not.

I even have my own personal “mondegreen” with “American Pie”: late in the song McLean sings, “As the flames climbed high into the night, to light the sacrificial rite….” I have always heard that as “As the planes climbed high into the night”, and you know what? I think that works. I’m gonna stick with it.

Sheila O’Malley wrote about the song and its titular event the other day:

That song, without my even knowing it, introduced me to my own culture. And I think I understood that. Before I had language, before I knew anything.

Well, there’s an interesting question for another time: What introduced me to my own culture? Meanwhile, here is “American Pie” by Don McLean.

 

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Someone asked on social media the other day, “What’s your favorite John Denver song?”

So, here’s my answer.

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Well, my mood hasn’t been great this week, for what are probably obvious reasons. But there is still music to fall back on and to remind oneself what is good in the world.

Like, punching Nazis.

Punching Nazis is good.

Punching Nazis is very good.

Here’s the theme music for a character who punched a lot of Nazis.

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Jim Croce would have been 82 years old last Friday.

There’s a very special magic at work in Croce’s songs. The blend of lyrics, guitar playing, and his slightly gravely tenor voice with his expert way of not always hitting the note dead on but rather sliding into it…damn that plane crash.

The live performances really get to me nowadays. I don’t know his life story, but every time I watch him perform, it looks like every note of every song is engraved on his heart someplace.

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This feature was hibernating through December, what with the Daily Dose of Christmas, but we’re back now! We’ll start with observing the bicentennial of German composer Anton Bruckner, who was born in 1824.

So yeah, we missed it. Oops.

I like Bruckner, but I’ve never fully entered his sound world beyond listening to his symphonies here and there. Bruckner wrote massive symphonies, some of which exceed an hour of length, and his sound is such that it often sounds as if he really intended to write for the organ rather than the orchestra. In fact, his writing for organ (he was a professional organist himself for a time) influenced his approach to orchestration, to the point that each of his symphonies is written for almost an identical complement of orchestra musicians, and none call for vocal input in any way.

Bruckner was a deeply spiritual man who wrote a good deal of sacred music in addition to the symphonies that make up the most famous part of his output. His general sound has been described as “Cathedral-like”, and though he was a deep admirer of Richard Wagner, there really isn’t much direct influence to be found. However, hearing Wagner provided Bruckner the inspiration he needed to work much more seriously at his own composing, after which his own work flowered. Bruckner enjoyed little success as a composer during his life, but his stature climbed greatly after his passing.

Today, Bruckner can be a “take him or leave him” kind of composer. For some, his works are simply too long-winded, with too little inspiration to sustain them, for enjoyable listening. I personally find his symphonies highly enjoyable, but it takes a special mood. Anton Bruckner, alas, is not for me in terms of every day listening.

Hardly all of his work is towering organ-like symphonies, though. He wrote a great deal of sacred vocal music, and that’s what I’m featuring today. This is a motet called “Locus Iste”, which Bruckner wrote for the dedication of a new cathedral in Linz, Austria. Listening to this, it’s not hard at all to hear the line connecting Bruckner to earlier sacred music masters like Bach, and even farther beyond. The motet is, after all, one of the oldest forms in Western music.

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Another favorite by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors.

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